


Amor Vincit Omnia

by everythingevelyn



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Backstory, Before 1st Movie, F/M, Gen, Mainly cause I don't want to do too much research, Maybe I'm not quite sure yet, Slow Burn, Smut, Woman painter in the 1700s, if i get around to posting more lol., lots of distrust!!! but w attraction mixed in, more thought was put into paint color choices than backstory, of sorts, the name has to do with the story it'll get brought up later, this was just an idea I had for a long time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-12-16 18:08:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21040514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everythingevelyn/pseuds/everythingevelyn
Summary: A broke artist living on the edges of civilization, Cassandra would do nearly anything to get off this god-forsaken island.Even if that means boarding a pirate ship.





	Amor Vincit Omnia

**Author's Note:**

> lmao i got drunk and made this the other night.  
dont judge me for my crush on barbossa  
i might continue this!! whenever the inspiration strikes  
plz forgive me for the pirate speech

Cassandra was mid-sip of her afternoon tea when she heard the pounding of heavy boots echoing down the street. She tensed for a moment, waiting to see if they might pass by the building she was in, hoping they were just on their way to arrest some sap on the other side of town.

No such luck. A loud knocking came at the door downstairs. It sounded like the soldiers were trying to break down the door, as was their usual way.

“Shit, shit, shit!” Cassandra let go of her teacup immediately, causing the drink to spill out on the table and spread to the floor. She had no care that though as she rushed around her room, gathering up anything that wasn’t already in her satchel and stuffing it in. Thankfully, she didn’t trust the women in the house she was boarding to not have sticky fingers, so almost everything was tied up anyway.

“This is a raid!” She heard being shouted from downstairs as she tugged on her shoes. The sounds of scuffling and shouts quickly came in response, and Cassandra smirked as she heard Madame Lucy, the lady of the house, yelling at the soldiers that had broken in. Not one to wait around, Cassandra threw her bag out the window in her room, and then followed after it.

“You have been charged on accounts for prostiution, solicitation, tax evasion…” The shouts of the officer continued as Cassandra jogged across the rooftops away from the brothel she had been rooming at. As the voices faded, Cassandra started in the direction of the center of town, far away from the trouble she was leaving behind. She knew all those women would be alright. This had been the third time this year that soldiers had tried to put charges to Madame Lucy’s house, and none of them had ever stuck. Still, Cassandra didn’t want to spend the afternoon in jail, so it was best to move on.

Besides, she thought, rummaging through her bag to make sure she’d gotten everything, the state might take away all of her painting supplies, considering her collection was starting to reach the value of a small fortune. All of her oils she’d spent hours perfecting the shades on, her brushes, her various colored powders and creams, and her massive abundance of sketches. It’d been a few months since she’d gotten any sort of real work, so she’d recently taken to sketching anything and everything for practice. She’d done a few portraits of the women in the brothel in exchange for room and board, but even that well had to dry up sometime.

Now sure that all her things were sorted away, and that she was more than a few blocks from the raid, Cassandra started climbing down from the rooftops. She chose a spot that opened into an alley so she wasn’t just dropping down into the middle of the street. Leveraging her weight from window panes to wooden panels, she managed to plop down onto the ground. Since she was a bit out of shape, her landing was a little rough and hurt her ankles a bit, but she remained standing.

Readjusting her bag strap, she started to make her way towards one of the taverns down the road. If she couldn’t find a place to sleep, maybe she could convince a poor sailor to smuggle her off this island. If that didn’t work, she could always find some desperate man willing to let her warm his bed tonight.

Her soft-leather shoes crunched along the gravel of the street. It only took a few minutes to walk to one of the more popular taverns. Despite it still being late afternoon, people were pouring in and out. Sounds of loud, drunken laughter and yelling filled the air as Cassandra pushed her way in, keeping one hand over her bag as she did.

She immediately spotted Kitty, one of the girls from Madame Lucy’s, entertaining more than a fair amount of men in one of the corners of the bar. Kitty had a drink in hand, though it looked full, and was talking to the enraptured crowd of scruffy men, all hanging onto her every word.

The scene made Cassandra smile in amusement. In the time she had known her, Kitty always had a way of convincing any man to do whatever she wanted, an incredible skill in her line of work. Just a honey-sweet smile and a flutter of her long, curly lashes could drag even the most loyal man away from his wife. 

Cassandra turned to go sit down, maybe order a drink up with the bartender, but she’d already been spotted. Kitty’s voice echoed throughout the establishment as she shouted out Cassandra’s name.

She turned to face her only to see Kitty was already on her way over. A little embarrassed, Cassandra saw that most of the bar was looking at them curiously. She couldn’t blame them. Kitty was gorgeous, and that coupled with yelling brought stares from all over the room. The buxom woman grabbed Cassandra by the arm and started pulling her over towards the group of men in the corner, chattering the whole way.

“So you got out of the raid alright?” Cassandra asked her, as she had been sure that all of the women would have been swept up and jailed by the soldiers.

“Oh, that!” Kitty waved a hand through the air, dismissing the thought. “Lucy always knows in advance when a raid’s comin’, so she tells most of the girls to scram beforehand.” The pair reached the group of men, who were looking both happy to have Kitty back in their midst, and a little earnest towards Cassandra, probably taking her for a woman of the night as well.

“That might’ve been helpful to know!” Cassandra huffed. “I had to clamber out the bloody window!” She reached down and swiped a mug off the table and took a swing. Some man made a shout of protest but she glared right back. The man sat and stewed while his friends shoved and laughed at him. 

Kitty looked disapprovingly at the act, probably hoping that Cassandra didn’t piss off her potential customers. 

“Oh, you’d have been fine, Cassie! In all your travels I’m sure you’ve had to get out of worse scrapes than that!” Kitty laughed off the women’s concerns, trying to keep the tone light. At her words, however, one of the men sitting at a table not too far away looked up, inspecting the pair of women and then looking away. Kitty didn’t see it, but Cassandra caught the motion out of the corner of her eye. She ignored it, for now.

Cassandra took a seat in the group, due to Kitty’s insistence she sit and have a drink with the lot of them. Deciding she might as well, Cassandra bought a round for them all using the last few coins she’d had saved up. It wasn’t like she had enough for anything she needed, like passage aboard a ship or more paints. Might as well spend what she had now. Free alcohol won the men over and they started joking around eagerly with both Kitty and Cassandra, though most of the attention stayed on the dark-skinned beauty, considering she was more likely to be friendly to them than Cassandra was.

When Cassandra revealed that she was a painter, one of the men, an especially skinny and greasy one, turned all his attention towards her.

“How d’you get started in that career, ‘specially as a woman?” He asked, rubbing at his eye while his friend jabbed at him.

Cassandra grinned at the question, always happy to tell of her exploits. She took a swig, always one for theatrics when telling tales, and began.

“My father’s a very important man,” she started mysteriously. “When I was only a toddler he knew my hands were meant for the arts, and he hired me many teachers so that I might learn the skills of the masters’. I began my tutelage in Italy, studying under those who’d been painting all their lives. By the age of 11 I’d been commissioned all over England to do Portraits for Lords and Ladies, Dukes and Duchesses.” She bragged, belching a little bit at the end.

While the skinny blonde man looked impressed, his friend looked at Cassandra suspiciously.

“If yer some famous painter, how come yer on this island shacking up wit’ whores?” He gestured towards Kitty, who had left Cassandra to sit in the lap of a young man. The man was at the table with the man who had glanced over at Cassandra earlier. A little closer now, Cassandra saw that he was in a very festive hat and was talking lowly to another man at the table, pointedly ignoring the younger man and Kitty in his lap. The two were both laughing heartily as Kitty kept supplying the man with more rum.

Cassandra shrugged, not at all perturbed to be called out. “I got drunk and passed out on a fishing boat. Woke up three days later broke and decked on this island. Been stuck here working for scraps so I can try to leave ever since.” She finished off her drink and then offered to get some more for the men, who excitedly agreed, always eager for a free drink. She walked past Kitty’s table on the way to the bar, quickly eyeing the man in the large hat and his companion, who both looked to pouring over some map while the younger man kept his eyes on Kitty.

Cassandra sweet-talked her way into a few more drinks, as she had already spent the last of her money. She made her way back to the table to see her drinking companions were fiddling with the buckles on her bag, trying and failing to undo the straps. Cassandra cleared her throat to announce her arrival and then two men sprung away from the bag. They then both tried to appear as though they had just been having a serious conversation. She set down the drinks on the table, and they both grabbed at them quickly, the skinnier one immediately asking her questions again about her profession. 

Cassandra obliged, all the while keeping one hand resting on her bag.

“Y’know,” the skinny man, who had identified himself as Ragetti, began, “if you really be needin’ passage you could come with us! We’ll be travelin’ ta Cuba next and I’m sure you could find business there!” He suggested eagerly, while the other man, who called himself Pintel, glared and smacked his in the back of the head.  
“You loon! Can’t go invitin' women aboard without the captain’s permission!” Cassandra’s eyes lit up with the possibility of leaving the island.

“You too are sailors?” She asked excitedly. The men exchanged a look for a beat and then Pintel answered.

“...of sorts.”

“Well, where’s your captain? I’m sure I could ask ‘im myself.” Cassandra, a bit drunk now, started looking around the tavern. Most of the men, who she assumed were part of the crew, had spread out as the night progressed, getting into brawls and chatting up any of the women that came in.

Pintel started to speak up but Ragetti stopped him.

“He jus’ walked out wit’ Miss Kitty.” Ragetti pointed to the front door, where the man Kitty had been sitting on walked out with an arm around her waist. They both disappeared before Cassandra could even stand to go after them.

“Well, shit,” Cassandra muttered, then rolled her eyes. “Kitty’d probably do a better job convincing him than I ever could anyway,” she joked.

“If you talk t’ Barbossa he might be able to persuade Jackie t’ let ye on,” Pintel suggested. Cassandra raised her eyebrows at that.

“Barbossa?” She questioned.

“'e’s our first mate,” Ragetti pointed over to the table where the captain, presumably ‘Jackie’, had been sitting at. Cassandra turned her head to see they were gesturing towards the middle-aged man in the large-brimmed hat who was still talking in low tones to the man sitting next to him at the table. Cassandra noticed that the maps they had set out were gone. She got an uneasy feeling when she looked at the two of them conspiring like that. Even in her inebriated state, she didn’t quite believe that this was just a crew of simple sailors.

She turned her head back towards Pintel and Ragetti to tell them not to bother, that she would be finding transportation some safer, other way, only to find Ragetti had already shot up from the table, and Pintel trailing behind him to go talk to their chief officer.

Cassandra felt irritation course through her. In retaliation, she finished Ragetti’s drink. The moment she placed the wooden mug down on the table again, the man at the table had gotten up and was marching towards her.

She saw that more than a few of the crew members looked up when the man started moving, out of respect or fear she wasn’t quite sure, but a few of them looked ill at ease. Unsure of how this conversation could go, Cassandra kicked her bag out from under the table so that she might be able to easily grab it if she needed to run.

Barbossa, as she now knew his name to be, approached her table and stood in front of her while she looked up to meet his eyes. Now that he was much closer, that troubled feeling hadn’t left. He had an air to him like he was planning to pick someone’s pockets or stab them straight through. Despite that, she found his bright eyes, now clearly visible as they met hers, bright and intelligent. Maybe in different circumstances and maybe if he was a few years younger, Cassandra would have found him handsome, in a sort of scruffy way.

“So yer th' painter wench Ragetti’s taken a fancy t'.” He stated, voice gruff and suspicious. He eyed her over, lingering for a moment too long on her large bag she had carried in with her.

“I don’t know about that,” her eyes slid over to the table in the back where the two men had stayed, both watching the conversation a bit nervously. “But I am a painter in need of transportation.”

Barbossa leaned forward, putting a bit of his weight to rest upon the table. Cassandra wasn’t sure if she should move backwards away from him or lean in to meet him. Instead she just raised her head to keep his gaze challengingly.

“We’ve a long voyage ahead o’ us, we’re building up a crew as ‘twas,” he drawled. “We’ll be making a few stops on our way to Cuba. Best be at least a month.” He tilted his head, a question in his silent movement. When Cassandra offered no objection, he continued. 

“Be ye prone to seasickness?” He questioned.

“No.” She answered immediately. 

He gave a thoughtful hum at that. Cassandra realized, to a bit of joy and chagrin, that he was seriously considering taking her aboard.

“Have ye money to pay us fer board an’ passage?” At that, Cassandra pursed her lips together.

“I find myself,” she paused, trying to find the right words to say to that, “a bit above my fortunes at the moment.” 

Barbossa let out a chuckle at that. “How do ye be expecting to pay us, then?” His grin turned lecherous, exposing some of his yellowing teeth. He leaned a little further onto the table.

“With yer body?”

Cassandra leaned away that time, a displeased look on her face.

“I’m not in that line of work right now.” She responded a bit tartly.

Barbossa let out a full laugh at that, making a few men nearby startle and jump. He took a seat down next to her at the table, foot propped a few inches away from her bag as he relaxed in the chair.

“So what line o' work be ye in? What do ye propose to give me fer me 'ospitality?” 

Cassandra regarded the man. He was well-dressed, and had a fair bit of finery on. Cassandra knew the difference between true nobility, and those pretending. She’d practically been trained her whole life to spot the differences. So she could tell if someone had been born into their fortunes, or had only recently started flaunting their wealth. Despite the crew’s rags they wore, all had gleaming swords and threw money at the bartenders and tavern wenches all night long. Though she had no coins to give, she knew something else that she could barter with, something a prideful man like him just might love.

“I could always paint your portrait?” She suggested.

The prospect made Barbossa’s smile grow in delight.

He tilted his head at her, glancing from her hands on the table to back up to her eyes.

“Seems we have an accord.”


End file.
